Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Ultimate Spider-Man sucks

I bought Ultimate Spider-Man (Xbox) used from EB Games awhile back.... I think I got it as part of a "2 for $20.00" sale. I sure hope I didn't pay more than $10.00 for this turd, anyway.

I've had it sitting on my shelf for so long.. looking for something to follow up the mostly great experience of Super Mario Galaxy, I thought I may as well try it out.... I really wanted to like this game. Yes, it's made by Treyarch, the Activision-owned developer that made Spider-Man 2/3 and probably Spider-Man 1. I've only personally played Spider-Man 2, and that game also bites.

You know when devs make the EXACT SAME GAME over and over and over again? I'm sure it happens with [sport title]:[whatever year], Madden 2009 for example, or NBA 2009, etc. I'm not into sports games, so I don't know if they're good/bad, but I always wonder why someone would want to buy the exact same game over again every year...

Except this is EXACTLY what Treyarch does with their Spider-Man games. Sure Ultimate Spider-Man has a slightly different look to it: more cel-shaded, more comic book cutscenes. but the gameplay itself is NEARLY IDENTICAL to Spider-Man 2, and from what I can tell, all the other Treyarch Spider-Man(1 & 3) games. There should be a law against making the same bloody game 4 times over, and expecting people to keep buying it. Actually, there is a word for it-- fraud.

All of the same problems from the previous Spider-Man games show up in Ultimate Spider-Man. There's races and "get to here before the time runs out" missions, and they're STUPID because as cool as the webswinging & climbing mechanic is, IT IS NOT NEARLY PRECISE ENOUGH to do these missions. You get so little time to get into the ball that's nestled in this stupid corner that it's impossible to even get into because you keep jumping off a wall when you're trying to stick to it.... and of course they pad out the game by making you repeat the same missions over & over to artificially extend the gameplay. Instead of, y'know, adding legitimate content.

After about 1 hour of play, I've had enough. This is the same crap I endured trying to accept that travesty known as the Spider-Man 2 game, it hasn't gotten any better. It makes me so mad, because the game basics are really cool. Spidey does swing around nicely, the overall look is good... it just all falls apart in the gameplay.

I can only hope that Activision lost a lot of money with the Spider-Man 3 game, and with even more luck for us gamers (if there was any justice) Treyarch will get shut down & never make another Spider-Man game ever again. I'm sure that's just too much to hope for.